“Midwives deliver – and not only babies. They save lives and promote good health in societies as a whole. They are an essential workforce in an effective healthcare system.”
- United Nations Population Fund Executive Director Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin

Oakland, CA - April 16, 2012 – Groundswell Fund is pleased to announce the first grant awards from its newest grantmaking endeavor, the Community Midwifery Fund (CMF), a funding collaborative that is now welcoming new donor partners.

The U.S. consistently lags behind other industrialized democracies in infant and maternal mortality rates. Thirty-three countries outpace the U.S. in preventing infant mortality, and fifty have done a better job of preventing maternal mortality. In fact, while birth outcomes in most countries are steadily improving, they are getting worse in the U.S., due in part to increasing racial disparities in maternal and infant health outcomes. African American women, for example, suffer maternal mortality rates nearly four times those of white women, and their babies are two to three times more likely to die – a gap that exists regardless of socio-economic status.

Women of color are also disproportionately impacted by the high c-section rate in the U.S., which leapt from 4.5 percent of all births in 1965 to 33 percent of all births today, in sharp contrast to the World Health Organization’s recommendation that c-section rates not exceed 10 percent. High c-section rates contribute to increased rates of premature birth, low birth weight infants and rising healthcare costs (birth-related hospital costs totaled $98 billion in 2010).

Midwifery and doula care are changing these outcomes across the U.S., providing low cost, high quality care where it might not otherwise exist. Studies consistently show that midwifery care reduces hospital interventions like c-sections, and lowers infant and maternal mortality rates among vulnerable populations.

Yet, while many industrialized countries now make midwifery care widely available, these vital services are extremely limited in the U.S., and there are very few philanthropic dollars moving to this field.

The Community Midwifery Fund was created to make high quality, culturally competent midwifery care more readily available, especially for low-income women and women of color. Its goal is to improve birth outcomes for mothers and babies and address racial disparities in maternal and infant health. In its first round of grantmaking, the CMF awarded a total of $92,500 to eight projects that:

Increase doula training programs for women of color and girls, and community-based apprenticeship opportunities for women of color midwives; and

Reclaim and support traditional birth practices within different cultures.

According to Vanessa Daniel, Executive Director of Groundswell Fund, “Community-based midwifery and doula training and care are lowering maternal mortality, infant mortality and cesarean rates for women in low- income communities and communities of color across the U.S. The Community Midwifery Fund helps to ensure that midwife and doula care is available to every woman who wants it, no matter what her race or economic status.”

CMF grantees include a Florida midwifery program that has succeeded in reducing low-birth weights and pre-term births among low-income African American women and Latinas and the International Center for Traditional Childbearing, a midwifery training program that successfully persuaded the Oregon Health Authority to research the viability of public insurance coverage for doula care to improve birth outcomes for women of color and low-income women

As Jennie Joseph, founder and Executive Director of CMF grantee Common Sense Childbirth of Winter Garden, FL, explains, "We started with the fundamental premise that every woman wants a healthy baby and every woman deserves one.” Joseph, who is also a midwife, says that her organization has discovered that “when a woman sees that you firmly believe that, she too is motivated to do the best she can for herself and her baby."

“Projects like this one demonstrate the power and effectiveness of midwifery care,” notes Daniel. “We invite funder and donor partners to join Groundswell in increasing support for community midwifery projects that have the power and potential to transform health outcomes for women, children, and communities.”

Birth is a Human Rights Issue. This declaration is the foundation of the Global Midwifery Council. Childbirth is the strong foundation upon which every healthy society grows.

The Global Midwifery Council is an international humanitarian organization of midwives and their supporters investigating birth and midwifery around the world. The council’s goal is to ensure that safe and respectful midwifery care during childbirth is available to every woman in the world.

The Global Midwifery Council analyses birth conditions worldwide to help retain, establish or reestablish midwifery care.

Philosophy

The most basic human right for every woman is the right to choose her place of birth and who will attend her. Mothers and babies do best in an environment conducive to the respect for the physiology of birth. Conscious, mother-centered midwifery has been shown to serve that need.

The Global Midwifery Council recognizes each woman’s unique spiritual, psychological and biological experience of childbirth.

Childbirth is the pivotal event in the life of each individual and is the cornerstone of a peaceful society.

Goals

Receive and respond to needs and requests about birth from around the world.

Keep a “Situation Room” where we will centralize Web-based information and analyze information about birth-related conditions globally.

Studies based on non-physiological birth are not applicable to physiological birth.

Midwives are the experts on physiological birth.

Editorial by Jan Tritten:

The birth of the Global Midwifery Council was in June of 2010 at the Home Child/Midwifery Today Conference in Moscow, Russia. It was born to change the paradigm of birth around the world. At international conferences, Midwifery Today has learned enough about midwifery and birth around the world to realize that birth itself is in deep trouble. The Global Midwifery Council (GMC) is an organization born to help make long-term changes in how mothers and babies are treated and how midwifery is carried out. We have a mission to stop inappropriate over-medicalization in birth care! Read More...

Jan Tritten

Jan Tritten is the founder and editor-in-chief of Midwifery Today magazine and a midwife who was in active practice from 1977–1989. She became a midwife in 1977 after the powerful homebirth of one of her daughters. Her mission is to make loving midwifery care the norm for birthing women and their babies throughout the world.